


Stars Make For Poor Namesakes

by kattastic99



Series: In Death Are You Redeemed [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Adam Taurus Redemption Arc, Because if nobody else is gonna do it then I guess I have to, Come on he's still a murderer he's just being constructive about it now, Exploitation, Gen, Kidnapping, Not in this fic though because FUCK coherency you get him post redemption arc, Okay so I SAY redemption arc but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:49:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27268279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattastic99/pseuds/kattastic99
Summary: Blake and Weiss are kidnapped by some very unhappy miners to ransom off to the SDC in exchange for the money they've long since earned, but they're rescued by a mysterious figure Blake finds awfully familiar.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna & Weiss Schnee
Series: In Death Are You Redeemed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993420
Kudos: 13





	Stars Make For Poor Namesakes

“How hard is it to pick up a fuckin’ scroll?!” somebody yelled. It must have been nearby since the echo was louder than hell. 

Blake’s eyes snapped open with a strangled gasp. Gods, her head was killing her, but at least she was awake. Whoever was yelling their head off was probably one of the people that had jumped her and Weiss when they were on patr-

Her neck cricked from how fast she swung her head around trying to find Weiss, who was very thankfully tied up next to her. Well, not thankfully, she supposed. Honestly this entire experience was a solid two out of ten as far as she was concerned. 

“Weiss,” Blake whispered. Her hands were tied behind her back with gravity bolas, and her feet were tied too, so all she could do was try to wiggle closer and prod at Weiss’ unconscious form with her boot. “Weiss! Wake up!” 

Weiss shifted, then her face scrunched up and she tried to sit up. When she couldn’t move her arms, however, she came to immediately. It took her a moment to finally focus enough to see Blake lying next to her, and she sighed with relief. “Thank goodness,” Weiss said as she rolled onto her back and sat up. Huntress training was good for a lot of things, core strength possibly chief among them. “I was worried I was gonna be alone like last time!”

Blake stared at her. “I’m sorry?” she couldn’t help but ask. Her friend just stared right back at her for a few moments before her face lit up with understanding. 

“Oh, right! I meant like the last time I was kidnapped. We’re not even in a cage, either,” she said as she looked around them, “this is honestly pretty good.”

Blake just hung her head. “Weiss, this is pretty far from good. Well,” she said as he looked around, “I guess you’re right for the most part.” Not only were they not in a cage, from the looks of it they’d just been tossed onto a tarp next to some boxes. They were in a mine of some kind, that much was certain, but it was well lit and she could even hear machinery in the distance. How far was hard to judge due to the echoes, but it was an active mine. 

That had its own problems, though; an active mine meant a pretty large group of people were at the very least okay with assisting a kidnapping. It also meant that the kidnappers were smart enough to realize that nobody was going to look for them here, too. Blake was all for unionizing but she’d have been happier without a Kidnapper’s National Union forming. 

“This might even be a three out of ten now that I think about it,” Blake said. “What do you think our chances are on getting out of here?” she asked as she continued scanning her surroundings. Whoever had woken her up hadn’t yelled since, which was a little concerning. 

Weiss let out a little hmph of thought. “Normally? Pretty good!” Then she frowned. “But normally, our auras weren’t shattered while we were unconscious to keep us from using our semblances to escape.” She shrugged, and then hopped in place a bit so she could press her back, and her tied up hands, against Blake’s. “Luckily we don’t need our semblances to undo a knot.”

Blake snorted as she got to work undoing the knot holding Weiss’ bolas together. “This has to be their first kidnapping or something, right?” The group that jumped them on patrol was smart, but they clearly underestimated them all the same. 

“You’d think, right?!” Weiss said as she waited. “I mean, why wouldn’t we be able to get out of these? We’re huntresses!” 

Blake paused. “Yeah. It’s almost like….”

Weiss sighed and finished her thought for her. “Like they want us to.” She tilted her head back in thought, bumping against Blake’s head a little. “What are we thinking? Why would they want us to escape?”

The knot was almost done so Blake hurried up a bit. “Getting out of our bindings and escaping are two different things. We’re out of aura, we were knocked out so it’s going to take longer than normal for it to recharge, and we have no idea where our weapons are. The mining operations are still active so there’s an immensely large number of opponents, and we don’t even know where we are. I think it’s less that they want us to get out of these, and more that they just don’t care.”

The bola clattered onto the tarp covered ice, and Weiss hurried to undo her feet before she got into a crouch and worked at undoing Blake’s. “Alright, so we can’t escape just yet and they know that. So, let’s not try.” 

Her own bolas clattered to the tarp in quick succession, and Blake stood up with only a slight wobble. “Get in their good graces, you think?” she asked as she steadied herself. 

Weiss just shrugged, looking a little unsteady on her feet as well. “If we don’t give them a reason to tie us back up, I don’t see why they would. They know we don’t have a chance, so we might as well behave and gather intel while we wait.”

“Good choice,” said a voice they didn’t recognize. Blake whirled around, and saw a man had stepped out from behind one of the stacks of crates. “That said, considering you never noticed me sitting like six feet away from you behind a box, not very good at intel are you?”

“Who are you people, and what do you want from us?” Weiss asked with as much forced annoyance and indifference as she could muster. The man standing before them was wearing standard miner’s gear, and looked to be human. An uncommon sight in Atlesian mines. 

“Why, we’re revolutionaries, of course!” the man said with a smug smile that Blake really wanted to smack off his face. “Glory to the White Fang or whatever the hell it is they say.”

Blake scoffed. “You’re not White Fang.” She crossed her arms and stared the man down. “So why are you pretending to be?”

The man shrugged with that same awful smirk on his face. “Why wouldn’t we? Nobody bats an eye when they hear the White Fang is protesting a mine, when aren’t they? Meanwhile, we have Blake Belladonna and Weiss Schnee in our cozy little custody, just waiting to be ransomed.” His smirk soured into a scowl. “You have no idea what it’s like to be a human miner in this day and age. Between the SDC’s Faunus labor favoritism and the White Fang’s protesting cutting into our hours, it’s all we can do to scrape by anymore. Job was always dangerous but it used to pay well, before Jacques Schnee took over and started running us all into the ground.”

Now it was Weiss’ turn to cross her arms. “And, what? You think my father is going to _reward_ this behavior?” 

This time the man actually laughed. “Oh we don’t care what he does, as long as he pays us. See, we’ve presented him with a wonderful opportunity! His estranged daughter, kidnapped by those awful White Fang and ransomed to him. Barely able to get her back, he welcomes her home with open arms and teary eyes, so happy that she can recover safe in the family home.” 

He turned to Blake, and his smile was much sharper. “As for you, well. It’s awful, really, but something in this mine doesn’t agree with Faunus. The SDC is looking into it, trying to figure out why every Faunus they assign here ends up sick, they’re thinking some kind of volatile dust vein that doesn’t affect humans. All they know is, well. Faunus don’t _leave_ , this mine.”

Blake scowled at him. “You’re back to a two out of ten.”

He laughed again. “Well, hey, at least you still have your spirits!”

Blake blinked. In the time it took her to do that, a sword had passed clean through the man’s neck from behind and she watched his head fall to the floor, followed by his body. 

“I can’t say the same for you,” said the figure holding a bloody sword. He was dressed well for Mantle, a thick coat and pants with leather gloves. His jacket was a dusty brown with a dull grey collar and center, and his pants were thick and the color of steel. His gloves were dark brown, and on his face was a bull mask; it covered his eyes and nose and even his forehead and hairline, with two bull horns curving out of the top. Underneath the blood, his sword’s blade was a rather gorgeous cobalt. 

“Who-” was all Weiss got out before the stranger turned his back to them. The sheathe for his sword was strapped to his back, and it was a muted, dirty green. 

“Later,” was all he said as he started walking. With little choice in the matter, Blake and Weiss followed him. His voice was familiar, but Blake couldn’t quite place it. From the back, she could see that his hair was cut rather choppily and fairly close to his head. “Your weapons are just down this passage,” he said over his shoulder. 

Blake didn’t like this, but they really didn’t have any other options. “What’s the escape route?” she asked sharply. 

For what it was worth, the stranger didn’t seem phased by either her hostility or her brevity. “We grab your weapons and take the ventilation tunnel; less workers to deal with and if we collapse it on the way out then the mine will have to be shut down for at least a week while they clear it. Gives me time to find the bastard falsifying the incident reports for the faunus deaths; all the reports say unidentifiable gas poisoning, but I’ve seen the bodies.” He paused his steps for a moment. “Gas doesn’t leave rope burns.”

Then he picked back up, and Blake and Weiss followed him to the room their weapons were stashed. Blake really, really wished she could forget just how many weapons were stashed in that unassuming little side pocket off the main passage. Most of them were low quality, probably made by hopeful teens or especially poor trainees. Gambol Shroud and Myrtenaster stood out amongst them all, the quality alone enough to find them. 

The rest of the little rescue trip went off without any problems, right up until their infuriatingly familiar rescuer pointed out the ventilation tunnel and three burly workers emerged from the side passages. 

That cobalt sword was still wet with blood. “Stand aside,” the stranger said, “I won’t kill you if I don’t have to. So don’t make me have to.”

They all charged him at once, and Weiss barely had time to chamber a round before one of them lost an arm and another was kicked into the wall face first. The third, however, managed to swing with his pick and knocked the sword right out of their rescuer’s hand. 

He clearly didn’t expect the masked man to pull a switchblade out of his front pocket and jam it into his neck. It slid off his aura, but then there was a crackling sound and the blade lit up with the effects of shock dust. Aura or not, getting tazed hurts like hell, and the worker fell to the floor with a scream. 

Blake watched their rescuer pick up his sword, and shouted. “Stop!”  Even Weiss turned to look at her. “They’ve been incapacitated, you don’t have to kill them!”

It felt like that brown bull mask was the only thing keeping the man’s stare from catching her on fire. Then he swung his sword at the wall, the blood sliding off it and splashing onto the ice, and it slid into his sheathe with a click. “Thank the young woman, gentlemen,” he said to the figure curled up on the floor and the one who was resting against the wall with a broken nose, “because she just saved your lives.”

The man who lost his arm was likely already dead, judging from the amount of red all over the floor. Blake and Weiss tried not to get it on their shoes, but it was hard to avoid. Neither of them cared that the men didn’t say anything. 

“Are there guards on the other side of this tunnel?” Blake asked. Her voice was quiet but it still echoed around them. 

The stranger didn’t miss a beat. “Not anymore.”

Weiss was the one to speak up next. “Is that how you knew there wouldn’t be many workers, on the path we took? Did you kill them?”

“Most of them,” was the only answer they got. 

They walked the rest of the passage in silence, and it wasn’t long until the light of the moon was visible in the cramped tunnel. Blake tried not to make it obvious that she was looking for the bodies when they finally emerged, but their rescuer noticed anyways. 

“They ran off,” he said, and she turned to glare at him. 

“Pardon me if I don’t exactly believe you,” she said. “Who the hell are you, anyways?”

He stared at her, for an amount of time she wasn’t comfortable with. “Seth. My name is Seth Umber.” Then he turned his head up to the sky, and just stared at the stars. “That’s what it is now, anyways.”

Blake took a step back, her blood turning to ice. She finally pinned a name to that voice, but it couldn’t be…… “What-” she turned, furious at the tremor in her voice. “What was your name before?” Weiss was looking at her like she’d grown six new pairs of ears but Blake couldn’t care less.

“.... I think you already know the answer to that, Blake. But it doesn’t matter.” He lowered his gaze to the horizon and sighed. “None of that matters anymore.” The snow crunched under his brown leather boots as he started to walk away towards the tree line. 

Blake stopped him with a shot from her weapon, the bullet steaming in the snow an inch away from his foot, and she heard Weiss gasp but her friend was smart enough not to intervene. “No, I think it does!” she shouted. “How?! How did you survive?!”

Adam Taurus turned around to face her, hands resting at his sides. “I didn’t. The man you killed, Blake, died in a cave behind that waterfall. I’m just what crawled out of it the next day.” He turned, and this time Blake stopped him with her words.

“Why did you save us?” she demanded, and she could tell he was getting annoyed but he didn’t seem to be getting angry. She couldn’t understand it, could barely wrap her head around him breathing ten feet away from her let alone saving her life. 

“Because enough faunus have died in that damned mine, Blake. I know you won’t believe me and honestly I don’t really care so long as you stay out of my way, but the dust mines in Solitas aren’t going to keep grinding our people into paste for much longer. If Atlas’ elites are willing to force people to die for their own comfort, then they don’t get to act surprised when I return the _fucking_ **_favor._** ” For a moment, for just a fleeting moment, Blake was reminded of the young man she’d dated once, so long ago. 

When he walked away to the tree line this time, Blake didn’t stop him at all. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to two things; One, what SCANT information we have on Adam's origins tells us he liked to look at the stars when he could get out of the mines, and two, Taurus is a constellation and I'm like 70% sure he picked his own last name. 
> 
> Fun fact: his mask's horns are hollow, they slide over his real ones.
> 
> Also, yes, he forgot to collapse the ventilation tunnel. It was either blow the tunnel or avoid talking to Blake any further and he chose the option that's going to keep him from getting inevitably shot.


End file.
